Page 489 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

Colin’s Column

16 June 2022

Aldeburgh Festival 2022 – Martyn Brabbins conducts BBC

National Orchestra of Wales in Elizabeth Maconchy’s Proud
Thames & Shostakovich Ten – Laura van der Heijden plays
William Walton’s Cello Concerto [live BBC Radio 3 broadcast].

Thursday, June 16, 2022
Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Snape, Suffolk

In the first of two back-to-back Aldeburgh Festival concerts (both live on Radio 3), Martyn
Brabbins and BBCNOW opened with Elizabeth Maconchy’s Proud Thames, from 1953. From a
gentle dawn-like trumpet-call and weaving woodwinds to ever-fuller and -louder
orchestration, the River takes a scenic journey from its starting point to arrive in London to
honour the (then new) Queen with a majestic flourish – all navigated with surety by Captain
Brabbins, a well-appointed compass, and rowing-as-one NOW shipmates.
(Then James Murphy of the Royal Philharmonic Society presented Honorary Membership to
Sir Humphrey Burton, http://www.colinscolumn.com/many-happy-returns-to-sir-humphrey-
burton-91-today-video-interview-with-melvyn-bragg/.)

Following the interval, Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony (first-performed 1953, Mravinsky), a
signed score that comes from the depths to (maybe) a forced optimistic ending. Without
second-guessing what might lie beneath the notes, Brabbins scrutinised the lengthy
opening Moderato (twenty-five minutes on this ooccasion) with subtle shades and
dynamics, conveying inward feelings (an especially haunting clarinet solo along the way),